We are not happy campers in the Land of Oz. A grumpy Australia views its fellows with suspicion and bitterness, licking our wounds over a polarising referendum. Collectively, instead of looking to the distractions of bread and circuses – annual holidays, Christmas repasts, concerts and beaches – I think it’s timely to re-visit ‘us’ a little. I invite you to venture back to a time before our present; a setting bereft of modernity and the ethical and cerebral calisthenics of postmodernity. Before Contentment, so to speak.
Presaging our luxuries of 24-hour businesses, refrigeration, air-conditioning, wi-fi and electricity. Before an eight-hour working day, paid holidays, emergency services, legal protection and empowerment of women, children, minorities and those with disabilities. Before the snug embrace of technology, and unadulterated food and water, hitherto the numbing mindlessness of sitcoms, reality TV and your sporting empire of choice. Consider it a thought experiment if you like. A mental school trip to yesteryear, or an indulgent caress of generations who sweated to build the society we recline in. Who knows? We may even feel a slight frisson of gratitude. Or an awareness of the debts we owe.
We start with this axiom: we took this place and claimed it as a dumping ground for Great Britain’s penal overflow. The land was not ours. It was not ceded by treaty. It was not taken in a formally declared war.
Australia was dragged from other people’s hands, re-purposed for our use and pleasure, mile by mile, stretch by stretch, billabong by billabong, corpse by corpse. Spears and clubs lost ground to swords and rifles. Atrocities and justifications, wailings and stolen lives, reprisals and pseudo-scientific rationales soaked into our soil.
Many of us hid from that unpleasant history. Many of us do so still. It’s certainly not a pretty, rosy view, looking back at the European incursion into the Antipodes. But not all truths are palatable, and not all views cheer the eye.
Life was tough for 18th and 19th century white Australians, in the burly days before Federation. Your last breath could come as quick as a coronary, or sped by snakebite; it could be malingering, gasping from septic wounds, or rattled out feebly from bodies broken by arduous years of clearing tree roots.
'There are many chapters in this Australian tale that reveal kindness and courage, resilience and solidarity, inspiration and compassion, innovation and generosity, grace and progress. Most of us tend to dwell on those flattering chapters, skimming or ignoring the tales that don’t bring us joy.'
Society was unforgiving. There was no welfare system. No safety net. Poverty was shameful and sometimes mistakenly seen as a sign of God’s displeasure. The infant mortality rate was high, women were playthings of their men, and married women were expected to be absent from the workforce, instead working their guts out at home in the kitchen and elsewhere.
Single women, post-convict times, were judged harshly if they had relationships outside of marriage. Woe betide a woman caught having an affair (though men seemed to escape the stigma, a double standard that no longer flies to the same extent). A ‘Jezebel’ would be snubbed and scorned for life and children born outside of marriage grew up with a stigma that could and did last for years. A convict past, a teenage pregnancy or a divergent sexual orientation were skeletons you kept firmly in your closet. Any sign of human frailty, any error or moral failing could see you branded as a reprobate.
News was sporadic, education was rudimentary, science was dodgy, governments were as suspect as they are now, medicine was not up to scratch, and work was physically demanding and sometimes scarce. People depended on their families, their friends, fellow employees and sometimes their fellow church members for friendship and support. That support was conditional on conforming to societal expectations and conventions. People were respectable, or they were not accepted. You ruled or you were ruled.
The social conditions and systemic injustices led to dispossession and theft, fear and hatred, poverty and cruelty. Still, tentative voices were raised for justice and parity, stemming from shearer’s sheds, pulpits and printing presses. Societies and unions were formed. Political parties were forged. All the while, corporal and capital punishment held the line for the wealthy and the virtuous.
We were not yet a nation. We reaped and profited from land that was not ours. We built and bred and created and innovated and despoiled. We viewed the changes and profits we had wrought as a blessing; a sign of God’s favour. We included and excluded, we punished, banished and executed. And Deakin’s White Australia Policy of the 20th century was to set the dimly-lit way to national progress – through wars and fires and tragedies and miracles – until kinder angels prevailed in the 1970s.
Our ruthlessness was practised on our own, but it was especially true of how we treated the original inhabitants of these lands, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who were driven from their lands by the coming of the Europeans. They were exploited, exterminated, killed, poisoned, raped, stereotyped. Traduced. And in many parts of the country there were still instances of conflict with Indigenous Australians leading into the 20th century. In 1928, in the Northern Territory, several hundred Warlpiri, Anmatyere and Kaytetye people were killed in reprisal for killing a dingo trapper.
Dismissing our predecessors as a dying race, pushed onto missions and hidden from view amid attempt to ‘breed’ out Aboriginal heritage, Australian society provided some care to its own, through churches and philanthropic charitable organisations. But compassion was conditional, and it came at a behavioural cost. It is uncomfortable to acknowledge the hypocrisy and brutal aspects of our past. That discomfort is a healthy thing.
Viewing the past through the framework of the present always gives a distorted view. It’s called revisionism; judging yesterday’s events and choices through the prism of today’s comprehension. No matter how satisfying hindsight may feel, it’s not a fair way to view the past. That said, there are some universal truths to be pursued; some things are always wrong, and some things are always right. Prejudice and kindness, discrimination and compassion, chauvinism and empathy are found intermingled as pages of our story.
The choice to ignore our history is not that simple for the past few generations, who have been exposed in their education and worldview to the realities of genocide and land clearance by sharp-eyed historians and authors; writers labelled as ‘black armband’ wearers by former PMs John Howard and Tony Abbott. Some voices, such as that of Keith Windschuttle, went so far as to describe some massacres of Aboriginal Australians as myths. The counter-challenge, of donning ‘white blindfolds’, appealed to those who wished to hold the line of righteous settlers.
For every Joseph Jacobs, Geoffrey Dutton, Manning Clarke, or Geoffrey Blainey, there is now a Henry Reynolds, or a Bruce Pascoe, or a Rachel Perkins. Voices drown each other out in the throes of storytelling; perspectives re-visit old ground and turn up new truths. We elect to listen to some voices and ignore the others. In turn, our guiding lights impact our mindsets, our voting choices, our charitable actions; the dictates of our conscience.
There are many chapters in this Australian tale that reveal kindness and courage, resilience and solidarity, inspiration and compassion, innovation and generosity, grace and progress. Most of us tend to dwell on those flattering chapters, skimming or ignoring the tales that don’t bring us joy. The hard stories. Doing so does not further the writing of our next chapter.
Barry Gittins is a Melbourne writer.
Main image: Chris Johnston illustration.